Wave Heart

 Posted by on May 12, 2025
May 122025
 
Wave Heart

The  Great Highway   The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department is sponsoring a temporary series of murals and sculptures along the Upper Great Highway. Once Proposition K was passed to permanently close the 2.5-mile stretch of road between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard to automobile traffic, the gist of a large park has begun to take shape. The plan calls for murals to be commissioned for eight major intersections along the Great Highway — Lincoln, Judah, Lawton, Noriega, Pacheco, Rivera, Taraval, and Vicente — and more elaborate “placemaking” murals at the busier intersections of Sloat, Judah, and Taraval. Bathroom Continue Reading

Bay Front Park

 Posted by on October 31, 2024
Oct 312024
 
Bay Front Park

The eastern side of Terry A. Francois Boulevard between Warriors Way and 16th Street SurfaceDesign has created a small oasis of calm on property owned and managed by the Port of San Francisco. According to SurfaceDesign, the park has been designed to incorporate sea level rise, which is a precedent for parks in the country. Although the park is on Port of San Francisco land, it was paid for by the Mission Bay Development Group, in partnership with the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure. It is part of the original master plan for Mission Bay, which dates back to Continue Reading

Point of Infinity

 Posted by on September 1, 2024
Sep 012024
 
Point of Infinity

66324 Yerba Buena Road – The Westernmost peak of Yerba Buena Island The sculpture’s full title is “Point of Infinity: Surface of Revolution with Constant Negative Curvature.” It evokes the “Tower of the Sun” sculpture of the 1939 fair, sits at the top of Yerba Buena Island, and has rather spectacular views of San Francisco and the East Bay. The artist explains: “The form of the sculpture is created from two converging hyperbolic curves that get closer and closer but never meet. In the material world, it is physically impossible to make a point that reaches all the way to Continue Reading

Skyhorn

 Posted by on September 1, 2024
Sep 012024
 
Skyhorn

On 3rd Street between 16th and Mariposa According to the artist’s website, Skyhorn is an engaging bronze sculpture that is a wayfinding landmark within a large UCSF medical campus. This monumental, interactive sound sculpture draws our attention to the sky and what lies beyond, serving as a poetic metaphor that invites pause and reflection.  Cast in bronze with a green-blue patina, the form consists of a large bell-shaped horn that faces upward and a smaller bell-shaped horn that faces the sidewalk where pedestrians and patients pass by.  A circular array of 28 wind-activated bells with crystals rims the outer perimeter Continue Reading

Estero en Movimiento by Claudio Talavera-Ballón

 Posted by on May 14, 2023
May 142023
 
Estero en Movimiento by Claudio Talavera-Ballón

Battery Bridge Between Bush and Market This street mural is by Peruvian-born, San Francisco artist Claudio Talavera-Ballón. Talavera-Ballón’s inspiration for his 1,900-square-foot mural is Point Reyes’ Drakes estuary. “I want to celebrate the nature that surrounds us here in the Bay Area, also in hopes the mural can serve as a reminder to protect the richness and fragility of nature.” The mural depicts the Pacific Ocean as well as the surrounding forests, farmlands, marshes, and shrublands that make up the estuary. Talavera-Ballón calls his work “Estero en Movimiento” (Estuary in Motion). At a cost of  $26 thousand, the mural was Continue Reading

Double Horizon by Sarah Sze

 Posted by on May 14, 2023
May 142023
 
Double Horizon by Sarah Sze

Yerba Buena Center Bridge Double Horizon is a 5,500-pound boulder split open like a geode. The split sculpture is embedded with tiles to create pixelated color images of the sky at different times of the day. Sze was born in Boston in 1969 and lives in New York. She received a BA in Architecture and Painting from Yale University in 1991 and an MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1997.  Sze builds her installations and intricate sculptures from the minutiae of everyday life. Sze was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and a Radcliffe Fellowship in 2005. Continue Reading

Node by Roxy Paine

 Posted by on May 14, 2023
May 142023
 
Node by Roxy Paine

Yerba Buena/Moscone Muni Station Node is by New York artist Roxy Paine. Paine describes the eight-ton sculpture as an “enormous bio-industrial rhizomatic organism” and “an elegant line connecting earth to sky, people to underground systems and sculpture to city.” I have been a huge fan of Roxy Paine’s and have seen many of his sculptures throughout the US, including Dendroids in Philadelphia.  It is time San Francisco has a representation of his work. Paine is a contemporary American artist best known for his tree-like structures he calls Dendroids. “I’m interested in taking entities that are organic and outside of the Continue Reading

Roof Top Plaza

 Posted by on February 19, 2023
Feb 192023
 
Roof Top Plaza

Atop the Chinatown Metro Station There is a small parklet above the Chinatown Metro station.  It has lovely views out into the area, as well as serving as a nice respite from the hustle and bustle of the neighborhood. The Chinatown station was designed by Kwan Henmi, now DLR Group, including the rooftop patio,

Arc Cycle

 Posted by on February 19, 2023
Feb 192023
 
Arc Cycle

Folsom Street / Moscone Center Metro Wagner’s installation uses six photos from her 1978-84 series “Moscone Center” The photos documented the excavation and building process of Moscone Center. The photos were laser-etched onto a 14-by-26-foot pane of glass. The works show the rebar and early construction forms of the convention center rising in what was once home to a large Filipino American community that was mostly eliminated by the construction project. Catherine Wagner (born January 31, 1953) is an American photographer, professor, and conceptual artist. Her works have been acquired by several major Bay Area museum collections as well as Continue Reading

Dance by Yumei You

 Posted by on February 19, 2023
Feb 192023
 
Dance by Yumei You

Chinatown Metro station These two metal screen sculptures are massive translations of Yumei Hou’s paper-cutting practice, executed in stainless steel using a laser and painted a vibrant red. “Yangge: Dance of the Bride” and “Yangge: Dance of the New Year” both take their names from the Yangge (Rice Sprout Song) folk dance from the northern provinces of China. “Dance of the Bride” depicts a Manchu wedding celebration with the figures of a bride in a sedan chair, musicians, stilt walkers and fan dancers prominent.   “Dance of the New Year” includes characters from the 16th-century Chinese novel “Journey to the Continue Reading

A Sense of Community

 Posted by on February 19, 2023
Feb 192023
 
A Sense of Community

Chinatown Metro Station This arched ceramic tile mural (14 feet high by 35 feet wide) is one of my favorites of the new BART station art installations. Embedded in this colorful array of tiles are small tiles meant to evoke the cultural exchange of the ancient Silk Road trade route where different fabrics, patterns, and ideas intersected. Individual tile patterns were sourced from art and design institutions, fashion designers, and local fabric stores. Rojas lives in San Francisco and is considered a key artist of the Bay Area’s Mission School movement. This is her third public commission in San Francisco, following Continue Reading

Convergence: Commute Patterns

 Posted by on February 19, 2023
Feb 192023
 
Convergence: Commute Patterns

Union Square BART Station The painted glasswork can be seen both inside and outside the station and spans the facade, roof deck, and the ceiling of the entrance on Geary. The base images of “Convergence: Commute Patterns” are a blue topographic map of the city with circles in different colors painted on top of the map showing the commute patterns of the Bay Area. The circles and lines, while explained in signage is not as intuitive as one would like.  Here is a discussion by the artists of the project: “We were working with multiple maps: One is a very Continue Reading

Lucy In The Sky

 Posted by on February 19, 2023
Feb 192023
 
Lucy In The Sky

Union Square Muni Station This immersive work by Erwin Redl consists of more than 500 translucent 10-by-10-inch light panels that each contain an array of LED lights spanning the color spectrum. They are suspended from the ceiling along the entire length of the 670-foot concourse level. The panels are programmed to change color and create patterns, with so many sequences possible that the same combination is unlikely to be seen twice. Redl (born in 1963) is an Austrian-born artist currently living in the United States. Redl studied electronic music and composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Then Continue Reading

Silent Stream

 Posted by on February 19, 2023
Feb 192023
 
Silent Stream

Silent Stream can be found at the Union Square Muni station. Meant to evoke an underground creek “Silent Stream” consists of 12,000 highly polished stainless-steel disks of varying sizes; it measures 250 feet in length with widths that vary from 4 feet to 8 feet. Originally from Chicago, San Francisco based Jim Campbell is an engineer by training, with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics from MIT. But in college, he was interested in film, and he took a class on documentaries with Richard Leacock, a pioneer of cinema verité. That led to some feature filmmaking, but “I did not Continue Reading

Face C/Z

 Posted by on February 19, 2023
Feb 192023
 
Face C/Z

Yerba Buena / Moscone Center Muni Station This piece, found at the Yerba Buena/Moscone Center Muni station is by Leslie Shows, a Los Angeles-based artist whose mixed-media works incorporate assemblage, painting, drawing, glass, and sculptural relief. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. According to the artist: “All my work is quite layered in the associations and different registers of meaning. ‘Face C/Z’ is like a threshold to a tunnel in a certain way, but Continue Reading

Van Ness Improvement Project Art Work

 Posted by on August 7, 2022
Aug 072022
 
Van Ness Improvement Project Art Work

August 2022 Van Ness Avenue Between Geary and O’Farrell These two sculptures were part of the Van Ness Avenue Improvement Project and are by Jorge Pardo. Cuban-born, Jorge Pardo is an internationally acclaimed contemporary artist whose work explores the intersections of painting, sculpture, design, and architecture. This untitled work consists of 13 steel figures that reach 21 feet at their tallest, topped by acrylic and fiberglass spheres. The two pieces are identical in form but painted in different shades consisting of citrus and peach tones, cool greens, and turquoise. At night, the top halves of the spheres light up. In his Continue Reading

Little Puffer

 Posted by on August 7, 2022
Aug 072022
 
Little Puffer

San Francisco Zoo At the area between Grizzly Gulch and The South American Area Little Puffer is believed to have been built by the Cagney Brothers’ Miniature Railroad Company around 1904. Herbert Fleishhacker purchased the train in 1925 and installed it at the new Herbert Fleishhacker Zoo, where it remained for 53 years. The history of Little Puffer is somewhat ambiguous, and if you would like to read the “stories”, you can do so here on the San Francisco Zoo website. I will pick the story up here.  After many years of service at the zoo the train sat in storage for Continue Reading

Infinite Reflections

 Posted by on April 18, 2022
Apr 182022
 
Infinite Reflections

March 2022 1028 Market Street Titled Infinite Reflections, the piece consists of sequentially arranged dichroic glass and polished steel panels. The stainless steel mirrors the landscape, and the glass filters the light and changes its colors “The plan is for people to be able to see the urban environment around them, but reflected and filtered through the art.” – artist Sanaz Mazinani. Mazinani said that she wanted to design something that would draw attention to the street and the neighborhood itself. She even modeled the installation’s tall, thin dimensions on the classic vertical signs that used to dot Mid-Market’s many theaters. Continue Reading

The Ladder (Sun or Moon)

 Posted by on March 17, 2022
Mar 172022
 
The Ladder (Sun or Moon)

March 2020 1066 Market Street   The Ladder (Sun or Moon), is a ten-storied neon and steel ‘ladder,’ resembling a functional fire escape.  The piece was created by Iván Navarro.  Born in Santiago, Chile, Navarro obtained his BA in Fine Arts from the University of Chile in Santiago, Chile “I believe that art must be surreptitiously implanted into the public realm,” “to produce a maximum effect and propel the viewer to question not just the meaning of the single art object, but of the entire lexicon of everyday objects that surround it. THE LADDER should not announce itself as a Continue Reading

Mary Pleasant Memorial Park

 Posted by on March 15, 2022
Mar 152022
 
Mary Pleasant Memorial Park

March 2022 Near the corner of Bush and Octavia Streets The Plaque Reads MARY ELLEN PLEASANT MEMORIAL PARK MOTHER OF CIVIL RIGHTS IN CALIFORNIA SHE SUPPORTED THE WESTERN TERMINUS OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY FOR FUGITIVE SLAVES 1850-1865. THIS LEGENDARY PIONEER ONCE LIVED ON THIS SITE AND PLANTED THESE SIX TREES PLACE BY THE SAN FRANCISCO AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL SOCIETY 1814 – 1904 Mary Pleasant was an amazing woman. She was perhaps the most powerful Black woman in Gold Rush-era San Francisco. Little is known of her life before 1820, by then she was living in New England and working Continue Reading

Holographic Entities Reminding of the Universe

 Posted by on May 11, 2021
May 112021
 
Holographic Entities Reminding of the Universe

May 2021 Pierpoint Lane between Third Street and Bridgeview Way – San Francisco Artists Statement: Consisting of nine artworks, this installation reflects my interest in ancestral traditions and folklore that speak to the interrelatedness of all beings, animate and inanimate, in the universe.  The sculptures are inspired by shapeshifters: ever-evolving entities that continue to reinvent themselves by embracing dualites and celebrating new identities.  The tallest, Ichiren-Bozu, is a mythic character that represents consciousness.  The upward movement and repetition of form implies growth and prosperity.  Traveling down the lane one will also encounter Continuous Eyes, the archetype of the protector: Animated Continue Reading

Orbital

 Posted by on May 7, 2021
May 072021
 
Orbital

May 2021 Pierpoint Lane between Third Street and Bridgeview Way Artists Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattegno – Studio Futureforms Artists Statement: Orbital is a contemporary garden folly, exploring geometric and material exuberance it evokes organic forms found in nature, but also giant robots and futuristic space vehicles. The structure is composed of three coiled legs that spiral towards the sky.  The exterior surface is defined by stainless steel origami skins, while the interior space is wrapped by a vortex of colorful tactile shingles.  Orbital’s dynamic form evokes an era of rapid change and uncertainty, while also inspiring curiousity and playful Continue Reading

Rolling Reflection

 Posted by on March 29, 2021
Mar 292021
 
Rolling Reflection

February 2021 1500 Mission Street This piece sits in what the project calls the forum, it is by Sanaz Maninani. Sanaz Mazinani is an artist and educator based between San Francisco and Toronto. Mazinani works across the disciplines of photography, social sculpture, and large-scale multimedia installations, Mazinani holds an undergraduate degree from Ontario College of Art & Design and a master’s degree in fine arts from Stanford University. Her work has appeared in solo exhibitions at institutions including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the West Vancouver Museum. * This is just one of several pieces of art Continue Reading

1500 Mission Street

 Posted by on March 23, 2021
Mar 232021
 
1500 Mission Street

February 2021 This is what is left of several buildings that once sat on this site. Built in 1925, 1500 Mission was a one-story reinforced concrete industrial building originally designed in the Classical Revival style for the White Motor Company. The White Motor Company was created out of the White Sewing Machine Company. Founded by Thomas H White in 1876, his son, Rollin Henry White,  invented the auto flash boiler in 1899. With his two brothers, Windsor and Walter, the sons diversified the sewing machine company’s products by introducing trucks and the White Steamer automobile in 1900. Around 1940, the Continue Reading

Refrain by Walter Hood

 Posted by on March 19, 2021
Mar 192021
 
Refrain by Walter Hood

February 2021 Hunter’s Point/ Bayview Refrain was produced in 2015 and is made of steel. Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California. He is also a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and lectures on professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He is a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, and 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. Funding for the piece was proved by the US Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration, the budge was $250,000. Refrain Continue Reading

Frame by Mildred Howard

 Posted by on March 8, 2021
Mar 082021
 
Frame by Mildred Howard

February 2021 Bay View / Hunter’s Point Frame is an enlarged version of an antique Rococo style frame. Howard’s frame is at the scale of the natural world around it, between 15-20 feet high.  The use of the frame is no longer intended to frame a single small work of art, it frames the multiple views and perspectives of the Shipyard’s landscape. Frame is a piece that sits in collaboration with Walter Hood’s Refrain. Frame–Refrain transfers the framed object’s connoted values of appreciation, privilege, and value to the landscape itself. Frame–Refrain provides a historical point of contact between the worlds Continue Reading

Stream of Consciousness

 Posted by on February 25, 2021
Feb 252021
 
Stream of Consciousness

February 2021 Bayview / Hunters Point Hillpoint Park – Picnic Area Innes Court Stream of Consciousness is a 120 foot long ribbon of historic, contemporary, and scientific images interspersed with  literary quotes.  The tiles tell the story of water from the depths of the sea to the constellations in the sky.  The images were made by Bayview Hunters Point school children This piece was funded by the US Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration. Created by Think Round Inc., the piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, and created by Heidi Hardin working with Colette Crutcher. The work of Continue Reading

Floating Points

 Posted by on February 16, 2021
Feb 162021
 
Floating Points

February 2021 1500 Mission Street Shannon Finley, a Berlin- based artist, created this piece that stands by the front door to 1500 Mission, between the  glass facade and a 30 foot green wall.  It stands 15-foot high and is made of stainless steel, powder-coated matte black. Comprised of multiple planes set at various angles, the sculpture is intended to act as a companion piece to the building itself — its light mimicking the light of the building’s facade. “Floating Points”  is Finley’s first US commission. Shannon Finley is a sculptor, painter and animator who creates works that reflect a strong Continue Reading

Prevailing Winds

 Posted by on February 9, 2021
Feb 092021
 
Prevailing Winds

February 2021 1500 Mission Street “Prevailing Winds” by artist Catherine Wagner . Catherine is a San Francisco-based artist, known best for her conceptual photography. Wagner’s work often involves extensive research and, in this instance, she studied Bay Area wind patterns and then laser cut the resulting cartographic data onto eight aluminum panels. Lining the South Van Ness sidewalk of the 1500 Mission Street project, these functional sculptures have arrow-shaped holes and rectangular notches, which both help mitigate the wind and add poetry to the urban landscape. Ms. Wagner is a Professor of Studio Art, as well as the Dean of the Continue Reading

Haig Patigian’s Creation at the GGIE

 Posted by on February 3, 2021
Feb 032021
 
Haig Patigian's Creation at the GGIE

February 3, 2021 300 Filbert / Filbert Steps Haig Patigian is represented on this site with many of his works. Patigian (1876-1950) was born in the city of Van in the Ottoman Empire. His parents were teachers at the American Mission School in Armenia. He was largely self-taught as a sculptor.Patigian spent most of his career in San Francisco, California and most of his works are located in California. This piece of art is now on private property, but proudly displayed.  It is the studio model of Haig Patigian’s Creation that was sculpted for the Golden Gate International Exposition.  It Continue Reading

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